Finger Lickin' Good???

Yes, dear readers, this is another fun-filled post about the -ahem- interesting things that resourceful young boys find and do in the great woods of Arkansas!

Before I recount this episode, let me give you a bit of background info. The boys-- all of them - love watching a show called, "Survivorman", about a man who goes into a different hostile environment every show and survives with only the items in his pockets or backpack. While we don't have TV, we do have the ability to watch certain things online. "Survivorman" is something we deem worth watching, and it's actually a pretty interesting show.

Anyway, Andrew was "surviving" in the hostile environment of the Arkansas woods, and decided that he needed to get something to eat. Soooo, he hunted himself up a turtle, whacked it with a rock (bet you couldn't do that, Survivorman!), cleaned it somehow, and -- drum roll, please -- roasted it over a fire!!!!!

Yes. He. Ate. It.

He very graciously offered R.G. and me some of the roasted delicacy. As he was handing a charred piece to his big brother, R.G. asked if he had actually tasted the turtle and Andrew nodded yes.

Big, tough, cowboy R.G. responded, "You're a bigger man than me!", and politely declined the offering. So did I. At least I could blame my lack of turtle appetite on my pregnancy!

I'm afraid that Andrew was a bit disappointed with his sissy family. But, as R.G. reminded everyone, if things ever get really bad, Andrew is going to be the one with the full stomach!

Mama

Samuel

Samuel was getting ready to walk out the door and check for eggs. Here was our conversation.

Mama: Samuel, don't walk outside in your socks.

Samuel: I not. I walking in my feet!

He then proceeded to show me his bare feet!

I guess I thought that was cute enough to run in here and post!

Mama

And The Answer is...

Yes, yes yes! God has chosen to bless us with another girl! Rachel is delighted, of course, and the boys are fine with it either way. However, Daniel was a little disappointed because he already had a (horrible) name picked out.

The only way I could actually tell it was a girl was because the kind sonogram man typed "female" on the screen for me!

Thanks for caring enough to check back and find out!

Katie

I Got A Sonogram.....

Here are some of the pictures.

The cute little baby toes. The sonogram man was actually able to count all the toes. It was so amazing! (Yes, the baby has five on each feet.)

The cute little baby profile.

I was proudly showing the pictures off to Daniel and he patiently said, "Hmmm, that's, um, great, Mama." He obviously wasn't reveling in the moment.

Well, I have purposely left out the sex of the baby in hopes that we can up our traffic for a few days by teasing our readers with that famous tagline...

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK!!! OR MAYBE SOONER!!!

Warning -- Disgusting Post!!

Hello, y'all! Today, I thought I'd share with my (3) readers another exciting adventure with the Millers.

We have chickens...lots of chickens. Chickens attract wildlife...lots of wildlife.

We like our chickens and feel a deep burden to protect them from the evil world that lurks beyond the safe haven of their chicken yard.

We have wildlife...lots of wildlife. Wildlife with long rat-like noses, almost-human feet and sickeningly-scaly prehensile tails. Have I described well enough the nasty, grotesque creature that is the object of my disgust?

Yes, it is the Opossum, or 'possum if you're dialectically inclined. (I am.)

I hate possums. They disgust me, if you hadn't noticed from earlier in the post. The funny(?) thing about this possum aversion is that my nickname as a child, which I remember with great fondness, was of all things...possum. Patty Possum to be exact.

Anyway, back to the "Great Adventure". Benny and Andrew went down to milk the cow this morning and Andrew came running back yelling at the top of his lungs, "Matthew, there's a possum in the feed bin." Matthew, with his hands ever itching for the feel of cold, hard, steel, grabbed a gun and ran down to "remove the wildlife from the premises".

(If he was reading this, Matthew would be loudly proclaiming that it wasn't just A gun, it was a 30 something, double aught, 22 gauge so-and-so. But I digress.)

Well, the wildlife was removed, and Benny and Andrew proudly showed me their bounty. Blech. Andrew actually had the audacity to ask if he could eat the revolting creature.

Anyway, we went back to normal life, finished the rest of the morning chores (don't I sound like Ma Ingalls!) and started school. Andrew and Joey then went to check one of Andrew's traps, and this time Joey came running back with the very urgent message that...you guessed it, Andrew caught yet another possum in his trap. (It must be an unspoken rule that the younger child is required to do all the message running.)

Matthew again grabbed a some-sort-or-other gun and became a bonifide Wildlife Removal Specialist. Of course, all the children, including my sweet Rachel, had to go watch the "removal". Again, the proud hunters brought back their disgusting quarry, but this time with a bonus??!!

See below to find out what the "bonus" was.

Did you guess "the rat-like, hairless, squirming, undeveloped possum young"??

If you did , you're a winner! The boys discovered that their were babies living in the possum's pouch. Andrew and Benny actually had the audacity to ask if they could "keep them". When I asked them what they would feed them, they said, "their mother's milk". Sadly, I had to inform them the the mother wasn't going to keep producing milk because THE MOTHER WAS DEAD.

You know, I normally have a great deal of compassion for baby animals. But I can truthfully say that I felt NO compassion, and maybe even a bit of glee, when I saw those pitiful, pink, wriggling babies and realized they weren't long for this world. I guess that makes me a possum Sadist.

So, here are a few slightly bloody pictures of the boys with their possums and Matthew with his dearly beloved...I mean his "Wildlife Removal Tool".

Well, if this post didn't disgust you, then you've got a stronger stomach than me! I'd better go now, I've got two possums waiting for a skinnin and a cookin! Ha ha!

(That's really not very funny, and I think typing that made my morning sickness recur.)

Mama

Please Vote For Us!

We've decided to run for the "Most Boring Blog On The Web", and we desperately need your vote! We have no cute wallpaper, no cute baby-ticker, no interesting, pithy sayings on the sidebar (if that is even the correct term), no blog roll, no nuthin. We are boring, boring borrrrrrring.

I absolutely love to decorate houses, but I won't even commit to decorating my house unless I'm ready to jump in with both feet and get it done. I guess I'm the same with the blog. It may be a very bad case of perfectionism creeping into my blog-world. I refused to decorate the house in Alturas for 2 years because I wasn't sure how long we were going to live there. You'd think the two-year mark would have been a hint that it was time to hang a few pictures! Anyway, I do plan on having the blog for a good while, but I still sometimes think of it as R.G.'s leftover blog that I am just using, thus I haven't quite committed to make it all mine.

I think I shall attempt to take complete ownership of said blog and begin to decorate it. Maybe a sidebar here, a blogroll there. I don't know, I may even hang a complicated wallpaper that makes the text somewhat difficult to read (that's a hint to some of the other blog decorators out there!). I might even start posting photos again!

Anyway, thanks to all our (3) readers for still taking the time to read the blog, even when it is visually unpalatable!

Katie

Life is Wonderful!

Life is wonderful on a regular basis here, but it got a little bit more wonderful several weeks ago when we found out that we are expecting another baby!

My due date is sometime in early August, and I'm planning on seeing the midwife this coming week.

I have had some not-so-fun morning sickness. To be more accurate, I've had quite a bit of miserable all-day sickness, but it's slowly getting better, and I'm thankful for the chance to have morning sickness again!

Well, that's about all I can think of to say about the situation without waxing poetic and having lullaby music playing in the background. Not that I don't like waxing poetic with lullaby music playing in the background, but I'm afraid I'm just not mentally up to the challenge and I would end up writing some twaddle that would bring me much literary humiliation in the future.

Anyway, we are rejoicing in our soon-to-be 9th child!